I stood by the door, the gun in my hand, my teeth chattering, Jesus, Jesus, I was frightened. Two bright eyes peered at me from the darkness between the rear legs of the bed.
‘Come out,’ I cried.
There was no reply. The eyes blinked.
‘I’ll blow your fucking head off if you don’t come out of there.’
I waited. At last he asked,
‘Are you going to kill me?’
I lowered the gun to my side.
‘For Christ’s sake, Charlie, will you come out of there and stop this nonsense.’
He crawled forth, hesitantly, on his belly, paused, on the ground, like a sick alligator, and then got to his feet. His sober black suit was decorated with tufts of fluff, and there was dust in his hair. He watched me warily, and extracted a piece of damp wool from his mouth.
‘All right‚’ I sighed. ‘Sit down.’
He sat down, on the bed. I pulled up a chair, and straddled it. It was an effort to hold the gun upright. Charlie put a hand to his back, and grimaced in pain.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ he muttered mournfully. ‘There was no need to do that.’
‘Shut up and listen to me,’ I said.
It was a little vicious man inside me who had spoken. Until now, I had been unaware of his existence. The discovery was not without comfort. I grinned, and let the little man have his way. I shall call him Al, for the connotations that are in it.
‘All right,’ said Al. ‘Now I’ve got the gun, and that gives me the advantage, okay?’
Charlie nodded mutely, and hung his head. Al pushed his hat to the back of his head, and stuck a cheroot between his teeth.
‘I want the truth,’ he said. ‘And don’t give me any more of that bull about sending Black to the island. Now, talk.’
Charlie sniffed, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He said something, which neither Al nor I caught, and Al roared,
‘Louder.’
Charlie cringed, and glanced at me apprehensively.
‘It’s no good to you,’ he said sullenly. ‘You wouldn’t know what to do with it, how to use it. Do you know what to do with —’
‘I ask the questions.’
‘The German would have known, but he’s gone. You’re alone now, Mr White, and you haven’t much time. You’ll have to let me help you.’
‘Have to, have to?’ cried Al. ‘Don’t give me that. Now look, come on, I want to hear the truth about all this. What was your connection with it?’
Charlie lifted his hands helplessly.
‘I’ve told you —’
‘How would you like to have your foot shot off?’
‘All right, all right, be careful with that gun. Everything I said was true, everything, the agency, Arthur and me, all that. Except, it was Arthur who wanted to give it to your crowd, and not me. I was against it. I knew what would happen if we got mixed up in that kind of thing. But he took it, and went off to the island. I told him not to go. Arthur, I said, you must be mad. But he didn’t listen, and he went off, and that Colonel whateverhisnameis had him shot, like a dog in the street.’
He sniffed again, and wiped his nose again, on his sleeve, again. Al deserted me. Charlie seemed to sense his departure, for he threw back his shoulders and met my gaze with a new bold fearlessness.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘the Colonel didn’t get his hands on the document anyway, did he? No, he didn’t, because we both know who got to it first, who picked up that little bottle where poor Arthur used to keep it, we know, don’t we, Mr White?’
‘Do we?’
He sighed hopelessly. In spite of the gun, he left the bed and went to the window. I looked at the gun. I looked at Charlie. The gun looked at him. He looked into the street. He said,
‘I’m forty-two, and starting to go bald. I never did anything in my life that I can be proud of. Buying and selling other people’s secrets is a dirty job. I’m no saint, I don’t say that, but just once, once in my life I want to do something that … I don’t know. They shot him as if he was nothing better than an animal. I don’t forgive them for that. With that document, I could spike their guns.’
He flung himself away from the window, in a fit of passion, and came and sat down on the bed again, with his hands held imploringly toward me.
‘Give me a chance, Mr White. Trust me. You’ve got nothing to lose, the thing is no good to you. What do you say?’
I looked at him, and saw a seal’s bright eyes.
‘Get out,’ I said.
He brushed ineffectually at the fluff on his suit, and went to the door. There he paused, and leaned toward me, opening his mouth to say a last word. I whirled on him, and aimed the gun at his forehead.
‘Get out,’ I roared.
He got out. I walked around the room, picking up bits of bread and paper, sighing, swearing. I opened the wardrobe, and threw the gun down among a pile of dirty laundry. I was alone. Erik arrested, Andreas drunk, or, worse, gone insane. There was a smell of blood in the air. There was no one. Good god.
‘Charlie, wait, Charlie. Charlie. Char—’
I reached the front door, and pulled it open. The street was empty. Two of my fellow-sojourners in the rooming house opened their doors and shouted down abuse at me. I slammed the door, and set off on my quest.
I did not know where to begin searching for him, but that did not deter me, only it gave to my journey a scope, a formlessness, which pleased my formless, and by now, let us admit it, rapidly decaying mind. I revisited some of the places where Erik had brought me the night before, not in any real hope of finding the knight, but just for old time’s sake. I searched in bars and cafés, in workmen’s tavernas; I even found my way into a brothel in the Piraeus, where the fat madam (why are they always fat?) welcomed me with a wide smile and a flood of incoherent, though entertaining English. I declined to have her fit me in, as she so aptly put it, and told her that I was searching for someone. Her smile died abruptly, and she swept away to call her husband, a wiry little man with a bald burnished skull, who, in silence, and with an expression of distaste, flung me out on the pavement with professional grace. I caught the last train back to Monasteraki, and walked slowly homeward.
Charlie sat in the corridor outside my room. He opened his drowsy eyes at my approach, and scrambled to his feet, ready with another persuasive argument. I did not want to hear it.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ I asked. ‘I’ve searched for you for hours.’
He blinked, and closed his mouth, and said,
‘Eh?’
‘Oh stop goggling at me. Here.’
I took the little silver box from my pocket, and clicked it open. I lifted the … wait, this is too mundane. The occasion deserves something. How about a roll on the drums, a blast of sennets and tuckets, and a few bars from the massed choir? Oh well. I lifted the piece of paper out of the box, marvelling yet again that such a small thing could cause so much agony and death, and gave it to him. It was so easy, I almost fainted.
‘Take it,’ I snarled.
Charlie hesitated, unwilling to believe that such luck as this could come his way without a bolt of lightning to strike off his hand. He took it at last, with his lip clamped in his teeth. His jowls trembled.
‘I won’t let you down,’ he muttered, an intensity of feeling causing his voice to shake.
‘I don’t give a curse what you do,’ I said. ‘Just take it, and go.’
He looked at the document, he looked at me. He looked at me, he looked at the document. He smiled. He smiled. He smiled. He smiled. He smiled. He …